Bath Festival Of Children's Literature: A tale of two adventurers

Matt Dickinson and Amelia Hempleman-Adams in the Green Room at the 2012 Telegraph Bath Festival Of Children's LiteraturePhoto: Jay Williams

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Tony Ross has drawn the beautiful cover illustration for the 2012 Telegraph Bath Festival Of Children's Literature. As with all cover art for the festival. characters use the famous Bath Festival Big Red Chair. Ross, the 74-year-old Londoner, is celebrated for his illustrations for the Little Princess books and for his Horrid Henry drawings. Ross will be appearing at the 2012 Festival in a Horrid Henry event.

You certainly learn things at the Telegraph Bath Festival Of Children's Literature. In the fascinating talk at the Guildhall called 'Exploring The World', for example, the audience found out that you could do your training for an amazing ski assault on Antarctica inside the big freezer of the Iceland store in Swindon.

That's where bold Bath schoolgirl Amelia Hempleman-Adams acclimatised before becoming, at 16, the youngest person ever to ski unassisted to the South Pole. Hempleman-Adams, daughter of the renowned explorer David, gave an amusing insight into what it's like facing conditions of almost total white-out, trying to stay warm in biting winds and having to put up with deprivations such as a toilet built out of ice blocks. In short, she seemed to have coped remarkably and had taken with her, as a good luck token, a coin owned by renowned 19th-century climber Ernest Shackleton. We also learned that you get fit very quickly skiing 13 hours a day.

She was on stage with novelist Matt Dickinson, one of the few Brits to ever conquer Mount Everest. Dickinson, who has drawn on his remarkable experiences for his thrilling teen books Mortal Chaosand Deep Oblivion, was asked by chair Gill McLay, artistic director of the festival, what made people like himself and Hempleman-Adams take risks that most people run from. Dickinson said that in his previous career as a film-maker there had been moments "when you question the sanity of the people you are working with" but said it had not put him off. Stubborness was definitely a quality you needed, he said.

Asked about his own frightening moments, he said: "I had one of those moments at 27,000 feet on Everest. I got half-way up a rope ladder and I could feel the ladder coming away and my fingers falling off. I really thought I was going to fall off and die. The higher you go on that sort of expedition, the more alone you feel. At the summit, one of the most exposed places on the planet, you feel like an alien. You know you are in a place where you are almost beyond rescue."

You won't be surprised to learn that both were already thinking ahead to their next adventures.